Pyrrhic victory

Pyrrhic victory

A Pyrrhic victory (IPAEng|ˈpɪrɪk) is a victory with devastating cost to the victor.

The phrase is named after King Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose army suffered irreplaceable casualties in defeating the Romans at Heraclea in 280 BC and Asculum in 279 BC during the Pyrrhic War. After the latter battle, Plutarch relates in a report by Dionysius:

The armies separated; and, it is said, Pyrrhus replied to one that gave him joy of his victory that "one more such victory would utterly undo him". For he had lost a great part of the forces he brought with him, and almost all his particular friends and principal commanders; there were no others there to make recruits, and he found the confederates in Italy backward. On the other hand, as from a fountain continually flowing out of the city, the Roman camp was quickly and plentifully filled up with fresh men, not at all abating in courage for the loss they sustained, but even from their very anger gaining new force and resolution to go on with the war. [Plutarch (trans. John Dryden) " [http://classics.mit.edu/Plutarch/pyrrhus.html Pyrrhus] ", hosted on the [http://classics.mit.edu The Internet Classics Archive] ]

In both of Pyrrhus's victories, the Romans lost more men than Pyrrhus did. However, the Romans had a much larger supply of men from which to draw soldiers, so their losses did less damage to their war effort than Pyrrhus's losses did to his.

The report is often quoted as "Another such victory over the Romans and we are undone,"Fact|date=May 2008 or "If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined." [Plutarch, "Life of Pyrrhus", [http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Pyrrhus*.html#21 21:8] .]

While it is most closely associated with a military battle, the term is used by analogy in fields such as business, politics, law, literature, and sport to describe any similar struggle which is ruinous for the victor.For example, the theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr writing of the need for coercion in the cause of justice warned that: "Moral reason must learn how to make a coercion its ally without running the risk of a Pyrrhic victory in which the ally exploits and negates the triumph" [Niebuhr, Reinhold "Moral man and Immoral Society", published by Scribner, 1932 and 1960, reprinted by Westminster John Knox Press, 2002, ISBN 0664224741, ISBN 9780664224745 p. 238.]

Examples

*Battle of the Hydaspes River (326 BC) - Between Greek Macedonian Forces and a Kingdom of India, Paurava's Forces
*Battle of Asculum (279 BC) - Pyrrhus of Epirus + Italian allies again the Romans
* Turko-Tang battle (681)
*Battle of Clontarf (1014) - Brian Boru against Leinster Irish and Vikings
*Battle of Malplaquet (1709) - War of the Spanish Succession
*Battle of Guilford Court House (1781) - American Revolutionary War
*Battle of Isandlwana (1879) - Anglo-Zulu war, between the British Empire and the Zulu Kingdom
*Battle of Crete (1941) - World War II, Mediterranean Campaign
*Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands (1942) - World War II, Solomon Islands Campaign
*Battle of the Marshes (1984) - Iran-Iraq war
*Battle of Vukovar (1991) - Croatian War of Independence
*First Battle of Grozny (1994-1995) - First Chechen War

ee also

* Cadmus
* Heroic failure
* No-win situation
* Mexican standoff
* Poison pill
* Spite house
* Winner's curse
* Zugzwang

References

Further reading

* Denson, John, "The Costs of War: America's Pyrrhic Victories". Transaction Publishers (1997). ISBN 1-560-00319-7.


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  • pyrrhic victory — A Pyrrhic victory is one that causes the victor to suffer so much to achieve it that it isn t worth winning …   The small dictionary of idiomes

  • Pyrrhic victory — [pir′ik, pir′ik] n. [Gr Pyrrhikos] a too costly victory: in reference to either of two victories of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, over the Romans in 280 and 279 B.C., with very heavy losses …   English World dictionary

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  • Pyrrhic Victory —    Pyrrhus (319 272 B.C.), king of Epirus, a kingdom in northern Greece, engaged the Romans in a bloody battle at Asculum in 279 B.C. Pyrrhus s troops defeated the Roman legions, but at a tragic cost. So many of his soldiers were lost all his… …   Dictionary of eponyms

  • pyrrhic victory —    A Pyrrhic victory is one that causes the victor to suffer so much to achieve it that it isn t worth winning.   (Dorking School Dictionary) …   English Idioms & idiomatic expressions

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